CRAFTED by Cheryl Penn...gentle threads, sharp pins and the sweet smell of linseed oil

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

It begins coming from an asemic-ZALOP envelope and it just has to be good!

Deep and dark, with warm brown tones and asemic "lace" with gentle threads from stitches.

What mystery is that "shadow" amongst the pages?

Open to ORGANIC: more asemic lace and earth auburn tones spread on with bold wide strokes 

INDUSTRIAL: with glimmers of metal piercing those warm tones, disrupting the calm...

Opening full fold to reveal zig-zag zalop stitches and a message, oh, so true:

"Copying Haptic Renders It Unhaptic"! For what you see here in these scanned images

on this blog, is not HAPTIC for you...ah, but as I hold this piece, feel-the-art and textures, 

smell the oil paints, hear the flip of the papers...for me, it is very HAPTIC!

...because by folding and unfolding, by "interfering"..I make Haptic Happen!

ouch! sharp pins, cold steel...thesis/antithesis...opening it full fold, revealing the impact:

CRAFTED! Beautifully and dynamically!

A work of art in deep tones from the South Africa Connection!

"FEEL-the -ART"! ...unless

Many thanks, Cheryl. This is an ORGANIC.... CRAFTED ....GEM!

[De Villo Sloan]

Bruno, your comments are very insightful to me. I appreciate. It gets difficult in this format. I agree about hearing from the artist directly. Otherwise, we might have to go around and around trying to define "mainstream."

[cheryl penn]

hey Bruno :-) nice to see you here - I am having a read, then a think, then an answer (hopefully!!!)

[De Villo Sloan]

Clues, that works for me Katerina. Cheryl has told us "The Island of Dr. Moreau" is an inspiration or reference for her piece. That opens the whole thing up for me. I can understand it much better. I can determine my own personal meaning much better. And, as I said, now I'd really like to dig into this work more.

 

Cheryl, we're all products of our times and experiences. The way I view art is shaped to some degree by a response against modernism (found in parts of postmodernism). We both love T.S. Eliot. Yet Eliot built so many obscure references into his poetry that it took a generation or two to trace them all so you could really understand what's going on.) So I can get a bit, what?, sensitive about issues of access. I don't want to get into some protracted thing, but did you expect that somebody would eventually pick up on "The Island of Dr. Moreau" connection? It's buried enough I'm not sure anyone would have. Now, unlike Bruno, you talk about your art and what it means. So you've put it out there. And that works. 

 

I'm not taking the role of critic or theorist here. I have tried to explain before, when you go to graduate school to be trained as a critic or theorist, you are taught methodologies. The general tendency is to try to make analysis of cultural materials as systematic and objective as possible, especially the methods related to formalism. I don't believe a "science of the text" is possible. In many kinds of formal analysis, you are taught the artist's intention is irrelevant. Sure, this serves the critics and scholars very well. I'm just the messenger here. I don't ascribe to this. But sometimes I still make the SERIOUS error of not taking the artist's intention as seriously as I should or gleaning the clues Kat mentions.

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Clues...precisely! The artist can give a bit of the context of the work, or "WHAT" is something in his/her mind, and thus helps the viewer "unfold" the work of art in his/her mind. It could be a drawing of "something" and then recycled, taking on a whole new.................(the  'm' word). In any case, that dark image is mysterious and fascinating, whatever the  m...............!

[cheryl penn]

EXCELLENT :-) - I wondered why we were always hitting a wall here!!! Yes - asking different things with the same word - but, in order to ask for the RIGHT thing in YOUR terminology - what do I ask for??? I need to see if Bruno agrees ;-)

[De Villo Sloan]

Katerina has helped us get on the same page. My challenge in all of this has been to overcome academic approaches, which are very rigid. Many of us do have a confusion of tongues here when it comes to terminology. We're going by different definitions and assuming we are talking about the same thing. I wouldn't necessarily ascribe any term to what you are talking about. Perhaps it is documentation. You get information from the artist directly. You have reactions from other people. It is far less formal. I do believe I understand what you are talking about now.

[cheryl penn]

DVS - this shows EXACTLY what I meant when asking for meaning - Kats question about the image, my response about source material - and then the work opens up :-) - not meaning per se - clues, hints - give me the correct terminology PLEEEZE - I am tired of falling fowl in asking for 'meaning'!!!

[De Villo Sloan]

A sub-text for sure. That is amazing, "The Island of Dr. Moreau" - probably my favorite HG Wells. All the cutting and stitching fits in perfectly, This raises 10,000 points I couldn't begin to address; sorry I wasn't the one who got to blog it.

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Yes, human and animal face!

That is a "face-of-a-man" in the upper photo, when the boekie is closed and we see only the cover. Like a Wild Man with long hair blown-in-the-wind. Then, as we see the pages unfolded and laying flat in a lower photo, i say it is a monkey...even the face of a camel, staring at us. However, with the face of-a-man there emerges the voluptuous Mother Goddess sitting on a deep, dark fur throne, head bent not revealing her face... (or is that my imagination run-wild, Herr Freud?)

[cheryl penn]

Was reading The Island of Dr Moreau? And started crossing humans and animals faces - so yes, the beginning of a monkey cross man. Severe haptic body change.